social media marketing

4 Reasons Not To Advertise Your Vacation Rental

Here are 4 reasons not to advertise your vacation rental property.

It doesn’t matter if you are new to the holiday rental market or have been operating a rental for the last 20 years.
It doesn’t matter if you own a high end luxury beach front mansion or a rustic cottage in the middle of nowhere.
You need to stop advertising your rental and you need to stop now.

Here’s why…

1. Everybody does it.

There are now 1 million vacation rentals listed on the HomeAway website alone. That’s just one website. Then there’s Tripadvisor, Vrbo, Flipkey and a host of others. Research indicates that there are somewhere between 10 and 15 million holiday rental properties worldwide.
No matter how you look at it, that’s a massive amount of competition.
Everyone’s listing what they have to offer. Everyone’s uploading photos. Everyone’s collecting online reviews.
In short, everyone is advertising their rental.
How can you stand out from the crowd if you do what everyone else is doing?

Stop advertising your rental.

2. It’s not social.

We all live in a world of social media. Over 2 billion people access social media platforms of one kind or another every day. Vacation rental owners across the globe post adverts to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other outlets.
The trouble is posting adverts to social media sites is anti-social. It alienates potential guests. It puts people off. It does’t work. You are wasting your time.

Stop advertising your rental.

3. You run out of things to say.

No matter how grand your property is. No matter where it is located. No matter what it’s unique selling point is. If you only advertise your property you run out of things to say.
I don’t think that there is an vacation rental owner anywhere on the planet that can list 30 great selling points about his or her property. So you either run out of things to say or you start repeating yourself.

Stop advertising your rental.

4. It’s not what guests want.

Owners advertise their rentals because that what owners do. That’s what owners have always done. Owners have always done things from an owners point of view. Old media, new media, social media, it’s always been the same.
They think potential guests sit down at a computer, deside where to go on holiday and then search for their property. They don’t.

Guests want more. They are used to getting more too. They have apps for more of this and apps for more of that. They have smartphones and tablets that deliver more.
They want more than adverts of your rental.

Stop advertising your rental.

So, what to do?

You got it, stop advertising your rental.

Look at things differently.
If you own a vacation rental property, you didn’t only buy it because it’s a nice house. You bought it because it’s in a nice location with lots to see and do. Firstly, you chose an area and started searching for real estate in that area.
This is how potential guests start their quest for a vacation. They settle on a location because it offers the activities they desire. Then, just as you did, they start looking for accommodation.

If you want to attract more guests tell them all about the attractions in your location.

The benefits are…

Not many owners do this so you will stand out from the crowd.

It’s much more social than trying the sell, sell, sell approach.

You won’t run out of things to say as there is so much more to tell people about.

Better still, it’s what potential guests want to know about. They want to know what there is to see, they want to know what there is to do. They want to know what’s going on.They want to know more than where thay are going to sleep.

Here at bookingsplus4g we have developed a new way of attracting guests and we are teaching owners how to stand out from the crowd by being social and informative.

Owners that have enrolled on our courses are having great results.

If you would like to learn more about what we are teaching just watch the video at the top right hand side of this page.